Mateusz Morawiecki, the Polish prime minister, said on Wednesday that thanks to “foresight and the persistent implementation of gas projects” Poland will be independent of Russian gas supplies from the end of April.
During a visit to a gas compression station of Poland’s gas pipeline operator Gaz-System near Warsaw, Morawiecki said it was naive to believe Russia would not use gas blackmail.
“It’s been using it for years, there were technical breaks,” he said. “Hints of that blackmail have occurred in previous years.”
But Morawiecki added attempts at blackmail would now fail to owe to the results of government policy.
“Thanks to our foresight, thanks to our prudence and the persistent implementation of these gas projects that we decided on, today – the end of April 2022, Poland has become independent of gas from the Russian Federation,” Morawiecki said. “No blackmail threatens us. Today we are showing what a responsible long-term policy is, the continuity of that policy and caring about the security of Poles.”
The prime minister claimed that the government of Leszek Miller, which was in office from 2001 to 2004, had made a mistake by deciding not to build a Baltic gas pipeline to Norway. “We could have been independent a long time ago,” he said. “We could have been sovereign in terms of gas. Unfortunately, then the government of the left, the SLD (Democratic Left Alliance – PAP) government made a mistake.”
Morawiecki added that if new gas connections had not been built with other countries, if not for the Baltic Pipe gas pipeline connecting Poland with Norway, and if not for an increase in domestic gas production, “we would be in big trouble today.”